Class B airspace

What is a Class B airspace excursion?

Security makes getting a Center, TRACON or tower tour increasingly difficult, but I have done it several times dating back to my first tower visit (VNY) in 1965, and I think it is worth the effort. It is fun, educational, and can enhance safety by allowing you to spend time in the shoes of the guy or gal on the other side of the frequency. My Denver TRACON visit was no different: I learned stuff, had a great time, met some wonderful people… and got an interesting safety lesson that I would like to relate here.

Friday Photo: California sunset

Sunsets are a common sight from the cockpit of an airplane, but the California coast may provide some of the best available. Valerie Ashton and Richard Garnett were flying a Piper Seminole over Morro Bay when they took this photo. It's a beautiful combination of sunset, clouds and coastline.
Cessna 150

A stuck valve leads to an impromptu skydiving flight

"You gotta let me pay you for your time and materials," I said to Art and Goren (not their real names), the two ag pilots who showed us how to free up a stuck valve on the 0-200 Continental engine of our Cessna 150. They simply refused payment of any kind. Then Art said, "Well, I would like to jump from a 150." Jump, like parachute jump? That is exactly what he meant.
Kids at airport

Aviation’s future: a young pilot’s perspective

“We need more young pilots, like you,” is a statement that I find myself hearing quite often. I typically hear this coming from older pilots and I completely agree with them. But a lot of the older pilots that I know got into aviation because they were either in the military, or they grew up around an airport. Today, these are not usually the top reasons why people get involved in aviation.
Thunderstorm buildup

Thunderstorms and airplanes and pilots: they don’t go together

Are there fewer thunderstorm-related private airplane crashes now than there were before Nexrad was beamed into almost every cockpit? The answer is yes, no and maybe. The reason for the vacillation is the simple fact that we have little or no information on exposure.

Friday Photo: Lake Powell

Lake Powell, located on the Utah/Arizona border, is a popular vacation spot - and this week's photo shows why. The sprawling reservoir and rocky banks make for a stunning scene, and there's no better vantage point than an airplane. Kim Neibauer was taking his wife on her first cross country in his KR2S when she snapped this photo.
Aldrin on moon

Full circle: from watching Buzz Aldrin to flying him

On a hot, mosquito-laden summer night in July of 1969, we had taken the liberty of renting a black-and-white television, which we perched on a small table in the larger front room of the trailer. We dined on our usual Swanson TV dinners warmed up in the toaster oven, and spent some time fiddling with the rabbit ears to get a good signal before we settled down to listen to Walter Cronkite, Wally Schirra and the crowd down at the Cape. It was going to be quite a night.

To Oshkosh and back – 5,500 miles at 100mph

My flight to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh in 2016 was special in several ways. The Experimental Aircraft Association was honoring the 75th anniversary of my make of airplane, the Interstate Cadet, a tandem trainer manufactured in 1941-42 in Los Angeles. We were a flight of 15 Cadets by the time we made it to Oshkosh. The trip would also be an ambitious one - over 5,000 miles at 100 miles per hour.

Quiz: IFR departure procedures

Our latest quiz will test your knowledge of a forgotten area of instrument flying: departure procedures. From minimum altitudes to ATC clearances to obstacle departures, see how much you know about taking off when the weather is low.
TFR map at FAA site

Going flying? Be sure to check FSS for TFRs

If you check the FAA's Temporary Flight Restriction website, are you covered? Maybe not, as this Florida pilot found out. His story clearly demonstrates that checking assumed “authoritative” sites, like NOTAMs and the FAA TFR pages, is not enough to guarantee pilots have current, comprehensive, accurate information regarding Temporary Flight Restrictions.

Friday Photo: land on the orange dot

Dick O'Reilly flew over 1500 miles in his 1942 Interstate Cadet to attend the world's greatest aviation celebration. He was celebrating the 75th anniversary of his airplane with over a dozen other owners, and this picture perfectly captures the magic of arriving at OSH by air. "Land on the orange dot; welcome to Oshkosh."
DC-3 on ramp

Six Degrees of Separation: A Young Pilot Meets a DC-3

Soon I found myself on the ramp with Ron, walking around the DC-3. Having never before flown anything larger than an Aztec, I was overwhelmed with the airplane. It was daunting, yet familiar, like one's first approach to an ancient Roman edifice theretofore known only from picture books. Even the fabric-covered control surfaces were massive and substantial. The DC-3 was regal in form and formidable in character, and I approached it with awe bordering on reverence.
Cessna in hangar

More comfortable in the air: an Adirondack odyssey

My first long-distance flight in a single-engine aircraft began exactly like every other mission we’ve ever flown: with my worrying about the weather and Dad squinting at the radar image on his iPad, assuring me that we would be fine as long as we got in the air within an hour. I call our trips missions because we rarely fly without a purpose.
Florida at night

A lasting impression: the power of spatial disorientation

Sam was wise beyond his years and decided to show me what it’s like to fly over the Florida Everglades, at night. We departed our east coast airport in a cozy 152 and headed west toward our normal practice area. So far, so good. As the saying goes I was fat, dumb, and happy enjoying the smooth night air when suddenly all sense of relative motion was lost. I felt as if we were hanging by a string in a dark closet.

Friday Photo: Partial Panel ILS

This is the moment of truth for instrument pilots - seeing the runway lights as you hit minimums on an approach. For instrument student Sandro Salgueiro, it was especially rewarding to see the lights on the ILS to runway 11 at Bedford, Massachusetts. He was finishing up his last lesson before his instrument checkride, and you'll notice the gyros are covered.
SGS 1-26

A glider encounter with a wind shear and gradient

My routine flight only became noteworthy as I approached the field for a landing. The club strip is grass, oriented roughly north/south and about 2500 ft. in length. As I entered the pattern at 1,000 ft. and began a downwind leg for a left hand pattern to the south, I began to note the windsocks sticking straight out to the East and realized the landing was going to be fun with the crosswind at or above the club’s operation limits.
Thunderstorm cloud

Is pilot interest in weather waning?

I am convinced that screens full of information are not a key to operating an airplane safely. The most important picture of all is not on a screen, it has to be in the pilot’s mind. A mental picture of where you are, where you are going, and how you are going to get there simply can’t be replaced by a picture on a screen. Nor will a screen show the churning inside a cumulonimbus.
Wright monument

Planes, puns, and politics – who has a right to the Wrights?

This article should have been a joke. My goal was to write a satire piece that would make a mountain out of what I had anticipated was a mole hill. Unfortunately, it seems I’ve been beaten to the punch by none other than three state governments, a federal government, and some New Zealanders. I had naively believed that at most this first flight thing would be a minor kerfuffle. I was wrong. It’s a major kerfuffle.

Friday Photo: Statue of Liberty tour

This photo is a great way to get in the spirit for the upcoming July 4 holiday. The Statue of Liberty stands proudly in New York Harbor, just off the sleek wing of Dominick Amorosso's Diamond DA-40. It's also a great reminder that this flight can be made without any special approval or training, just a pilot certificate and some pre-flight planning.
GFA cloud top map

The area forecast is going away – here’s why that’s bad news

Rumors have swirled for years, but now it’s really happening: the text-based Area Forecast (FA) will officially disappear on October 10, 2017, to be replaced by the Graphical Forecast for Aviation (GFA). On the surface, this seems like an inevitable step in the transition from coded text products to graphical, interactive weather maps. But before we relegate the FA to the dustbin of history, we should consider a few important details. This transition may not be quite so innocuous.